Armageddon Heights (a thriller) (6 page)

Lindegaard didn’t see the moistness in Napier’s eyes.

He was jolted awake by someone making a loud exclamation suffused with mounting terror.

Samuel Wade’s hand immediately darted to his coat pocket and the gun, his body flushed with adrenalin, instantly alert. Years of training had made it so. His being always as tight as a coiled spring under tension whether at home or abroad, on leave or at the front.

‘What’s happening? What’s happening?’

Wade blinked away sleep as the woman’s shrill voice stirred yet more urgent exclamations.

‘What the hell…?’ said the man headed for Northampton.

It didn’t take long for Wade to see what was causing the commotion. For a few seconds even he was taken aback, bludgeoned speechless by the unbelievable sight.

The bus was at a standstill. Strong sunlight pierced the coach, lighting it up as people were roused from their individual torpors and began to rise from their seats, bubbles of concerned murmuring filling the air. The sunlight was disconcerting enough – sunlight stronger than anything the months of June and July could muster – but this was the middle of February and only mere hours ago they had been in the grip of a winter rainstorm. But what was more alarming was what was attracting the rest of the passengers. The view through the windows.

Wade blinked, thinking this must be some kind of dream, that he wasn’t yet fully awake. Because what was out there couldn’t be real. It simply
couldn’t
be real.

The coach was standing in what appeared to be a vast open scrubland – a veritable desert – the cracked earth, reddish-orange in colour, was littered with dry, low-lying bushes and rocks that stretched as far as the eye could see, the boundary between ground and sky melted and fused together by the hazy, shimmering distance. Strips of white cloud sat in a pristine blue sky, and judging from the lack of shadow the sun was high overhead.

Wade was on his feet and pushing down the aisle through the stunned occupants towards the driver in an instant. But the driver’s cab was empty.

It didn’t make sense, any of this. He turned to see other passengers wiping their incredulous eyes, mirroring his own thoughts that somehow this was still the product of a dream gone bad.

‘Where are we?’ said the man who’d arrived late for the bus. ‘Where the bloody hell are we?’

The young man, headphones being slowly stripped from his ears stared dumbly out of the window, blinking. ‘This ain’t the motorway. What’s he think he’s doing? The man took a wrong turn somewhere.’

‘A wrong turn?’ It was the suited businessman entering the discussion. ‘You think this is a wrong turn, you moron? Take a look outside – it’s a fucking desert!’

‘But we don’t have deserts…’ the young man said, his mouth hanging open.

‘Exactly!’ said the businessman, barging his way to the front of the bus towards Wade. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked Wade brusquely. Then he noticed the driver’s cab was empty. ‘So where is he? Outside? I’ve got to get to Edinburgh.’ He scowled at his watch and blinked. ‘It’s stopped. Hey, anyone got the right time here?’

Wade opened the cab door and sat in the driver’s seat. He searched the control panel.

‘What are you doing?’ said the businessman. ‘Do you know where the damn driver is?’

Wade pushed a button, and with the rushing sound of compressed air the double doors of the coach opened.

The heat hit them at once as the searing sunlight flooded in and lay like a smouldering carpet on the coach’s floor near the cab. Wade ignored the businessman, whose young, blonde-haired partner came to his side and took his arm, drawing him closer to him. He shrugged her off and followed Wade, who was already stepping off the coach, his shoes crunching on the dusty gravel road.

‘Hey, my watch has stopped, too!’ said the young man with the headphones.

Wade took a few steps away from the coach and narrowed his eyes, shielding them against the glare of the sun reflecting off the baking ground.

This was still a nightmare. He was back in the Middle East. And his heart raced wildly, like a chained dog out of control and trying to tear itself free of its shackles.

‘Do you know what’s going on?’ the businessman said coming to Wade’s side.

Wade shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Well someone sure knows something, because someone’s screwed up real bad and they’re going to pay big time for it.’ He stopped talking and studied the strange, unfamiliar landscape. ‘So where exactly are we?’

Wade shook his head slowly. ‘One thing’s for sure, we’re not in Kansas anymore…’

‘Kansas? Are you crazy?’

They heard other people getting off the coach, their voices hushed, awed by the sight.

The sun beat down on them like a white-hot hammer. Wade bent down to a red rock and touched it. Picked it up and squeezed it in the palm of his hand, feeling it dig into his flesh. It felt
so
real. Warm and real. He tossed it away. It clattered against other rocks and pebbles and came to rest near a clump of small round scrubby bushes, their bleached, leafless, tightly rolled balls of stems looking as if they would be brittle to the touch. Acres of similar plants stretched out into the far distance, the appearance one of a grey, frozen sea.

The older man and his wife joined the two men.

‘What’s going on,’ said the man. ‘This is a desert. How’d we end up in a bloody desert?’

‘But where are we?’ the woman asked. ‘You don’t get on a bus going to Northampton and end up in a desert miles from anywhere. I’ve got to be dreaming…’

‘Then we share the same dream, lady,’ said the businessman, reaching down and wiping dust off his immaculately polished black shoes. He saw his partner climbing down the steps of the coach. ‘Get back inside, Cheryl, I’ve got this covered.’ The woman turned meekly around and stepped back onto the coach.

‘So you’ve got it covered, have you?’ said the older man.

‘Sure. There has to be a rational explanation for all this.’ He turned to see Wade walking quietly to the front of the coach and followed him.

This didn’t make sense, thought Wade. The road they were on was little more than a dirt-track only just wide enough to accommodate the bus. It cut across the desert as straight as an arrow towards what looked like a range of purple-coloured mountains many miles away, a scarf of cloud wrapped around the tallest peaks. Turning to face the rear of the bus Wade saw that the road took an equally straight line, fading into the bubbling haze.

‘You knew how to open the door,’ said the businessman. ‘You know something about buses?’

‘I know something about a lot of vehicles,’ he replied distractedly, squinting.

‘Are you with the bus company?’

Wade shook his head. Bent down to the side of the road and scooped up a handful of sand that slowly dribbled though his fingertips.

‘I’ve got to get to Edinburgh…’ the businessman said.

‘So I heard. Look, this isn’t my stop either,’ he said. ‘I’d forget Edinburgh – we’ve got bigger problems.’

‘There has to be a logical explanation.’

‘Sure there has. When you come up with it let me know,’ Wade said, walking past him to the small crowd of people who were getting increasingly agitated. He could sense it coming off them like bad steam. They’d get themselves worked up into a panic next.

‘It’s a dream, man!’ said the young man, twiddling with his headphones. ‘I’m gonna wake up and find out I’ve been having a nightmare. I ate cheese and onion crisps before I went to sleep. Cheese always gives me nightmares.’

‘There’s no real cheese in cheese and onion crisps,’ said the older man.

‘Sure there is!’ the young man almost squealed. ‘Cheese gives you nightmares. This is a nightmare!’ He began to close up on himself like a flower at night, his arms folding around his body.

‘There’s cheese powder, I believe…’ the older woman interjected.

‘What?’ said her husband.

‘Cheese powder in cheese and onion crisps.’

‘What the fuck does that matter?’ the businessman blazed, throwing up his arms in frustration. ‘Your dream, my dream, what does it matter? We’re all in the same fucking dream if you haven’t noticed!’

‘Calm down,’ said Wade, noticing how the rest of the passengers were starting to get restless.

The young man who’d arrived late for the bus stepped up. ‘That’s easy to say, but this is weird. This can’t be happening. A bus can’t take a wrong turn and find itself in a desert, like the lady already said. We’re in the middle of nowhere in a place none of us recognise. And you tell us to calm down? Who the hell do you think you are?’

‘New Mexico,’ said the small balding man in his forties who had been sitting all alone on the bus. He was the last to vacate and was quietly watching proceedings.

‘Say again,’ said the businessman.

‘The man said it’s a place no one recognises. I do. It looks like parts of New Mexico. I went there five years ago.’

‘New Mexico!’ said the businessman. ‘I’ve got to get to Edinburgh! I don’t need to be in New Mexico.’

‘For God’s sake, cut the Edinburgh crap, will you?’ Wade snapped, and the man stared at him, swallowed and walked to the rear of the bus grumbling. ‘New Mexico?’ he asked.

The balding man nodded. ‘Sort of. I went on a drive in the desert and this looks pretty much like what I saw there. Except…’

‘Except?’

The man frowned. ‘Except it doesn’t. Some aspects of it do at first glance. This vegetation, such as it is. It reminds me of the stuff I saw over there, but when you look real close it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Like I say, it looks like New Mexico, but that’s as far as I can say. But whichever way you look at it, we can’t be in New Mexico or anywhere else like that, because it’s impossible.’ The man held out his hand. ‘Martin Bolan,’ he said. ‘I’m a travelling rep for an engineering company based in Birmingham.’ He shook Wade’s hand. ‘But I’ve never travelled here before.’ He gave a nervous laugh, ran a hand over his thinning hair. Bolan angled his head, waiting for Wade to divulge his name, which he resisted. ‘Where do you reckon the driver’s gone? Maybe he knows something we don’t.’

Wade offered a barely perceptible shrug. ‘Beats me.’

‘The rest of them are getting jittery,’ said Bolan, casting a thumb in their direction.

‘And you’re not?’ Wade asked, looking the man over. He appeared unusually calm, at least outwardly.

‘Like the guy over there says,’ he said, nodding at the businessman who was standing at the rear of the bus staring into the distance and scuffing up clouds of dust in frustration, ‘there has to be a logical explanation for all this. We can’t all be dreaming the same damn nightmare at the same time, can we?’

Wade thought about it. Went over to the rest of the group who were huddled close together as if for protection.

‘Are you in charge here?’ It was the woman who Wade noticed had been sitting alone reading her Country Life magazine. She came up to Wade and stared him in the face, searching his eyes as if trying to dredge up an answer.

‘No, sorry. I’m not in charge.’

The others came forward to stand before Wade at the sound of her voice.

‘Well someone somewhere must be in charge,’ she said. ‘What are we going to do?’

He licked his lips and wiped sweat from his forehead. The heat was quite intense, even hotter than the weather he’d experienced deployed in the Middle East. ‘My thinking is that everyone gets back on the coach out of this sunshine until we figure out what to do.’

To his surprise the group stopped their frantic murmuring and began to file back on the coach. The businessman’s partner stared at them from her lonely seat, eyes wide and looking like a petrified deer.

Wade bent low, searching the edge of the road.

‘What are you looking for?’ Bolan said.

‘Tracks.’

‘What kind of tracks?’

‘The bus driver has to be somewhere. Must have headed off into the desert.’

‘Without telling anyone?’

Wade chewed his lower lip in thought. ‘I don’t know, maybe he panicked, left the bus to try and find help. I don’t have any other suggestions, do you?’

Bolan scratched his chin, his finger wiping away sweat from his eyes. ‘It’s blasted hot. He couldn’t have gotten far in this heat, could he?’

‘That’s my thinking.’ He stopped sharp. ‘Look, here’s a set of prints in the sand. Seems he was headed in that direction.’ He pointed towards the blistering heat haze in the far distance.

‘He must be mad,’ said Bolan.

‘Or frightened and desperate. I’m going to see if I can follow them,’ said Wade.

The businessman came up to them, his red face already showing signs of the heat. ‘My mobile phone’s not working. Can’t get a signal. What’s going on? What you found there?’

‘The bus driver’s tracks by the looks of it,’ Bolan answered. ‘My phone’s useless, too. I’ve already tried ringing out.’

‘Could be anybody’s tracks.’ The businessman sneered, looking down.

‘It’s hardly Piccadilly Circus,’ Wade said quietly. ‘I’m going to see if I can find him.’